


Vigil

by SylvanWitch



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Angst, Canonical Character Death, Character Study, M/M, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Pre-Slash
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-02
Updated: 2018-09-02
Packaged: 2019-07-06 01:08:03
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 920
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15875373
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SylvanWitch/pseuds/SylvanWitch
Summary: Ashes.  Penitence.  Sorrow.  Hope.





	Vigil

**Author's Note:**

> I finally worked up the nerve to watch _Avengers: Infinity War_. This story is my immediate reaction, a sort of coda. It is bleak but not hopeless.

The first sight of Titan should have been warning enough, its burning sky, crumbling cities.

 

He should have taken the message the dead soil had offered, should have recognized a prophecy when it caught in his lashes, when it smeared across his lips. 

 

Peter’s ashes are greasy when he rubs his fingers together, muffling the snap he tries to make, as if he could reverse the consequences of his failure through magic.

 

Magic didn’t work for Thor, either, apparently, and if it wasn’t working for a god, it sure as hell wasn’t going to work for Tony Stark.

 

He breathes in the kid’s remains, Quill’s, the big guy’s, the bug girl’s.  Strange.

 

He stares at the blue woman made of parts.  Even the analytical portion of his brain fails now, not cataloguing her anatomical features, not cannibalizing her design.

 

Tony is empty and his mouth tastes of death.

 

Eventually, they reach Earth, Nebula saying nothing as she pierces the atmosphere and cants the ship, shaking him loose to let gravity do its thing.

 

He hopes the suit repairs are enough to keep him from dying.  He hopes, too, that they aren’t.

 

When he regains consciousness in the sterility of a brightly lit hospital room, Tony at first thinks the beeping, ascending to a shrill note as it is, must be a bomb about to detonate.

 

He closes his eyes and lets out a relieved breath.

 

Then a nurse interrupts his hope with a pragmatic bustling, and he realizes it was the heart monitor, the skree merely panic at being awake once more someplace where the ashes have been cleaned up, the blame firmly placed without him there to gain his rightful share, the lion’s portion.

 

The door isn’t closed on the nurse’s hurried figure when the opening is filled by broad shoulders and blue eyes.

 

A blade goes through him, and for a moment Tony thinks he’s been impaled again.  When he realizes it’s just hope driving its roots into his guts, he curses under his breath and shakes his head.

 

“I can come back later…”

 

“No, no, it’s fine.  Fine.”  He’s always been a good liar; it’s what made him an outstanding salesman and a lousy friend.  The words sound threadbare in this case, but they’ll do for now.  It’s not like he owes Steve anything more.

 

Not like he has anything to offer anyway, nothing but suffering and sorrow and the hot shame that even now turns his guts to liquid fire.

 

Steve stops at the end of the bed, eyes skittering across Tony’s face and settling at last on a place somewhere over his left shoulder.  Parade rest.  Impassive.

 

“Who?” Tony demands, proud that his voice doesn’t shake and that his hands, hidden under the blanket, shake invisibly.

 

Steve names the dead, voice slurring over Bucky’s, and before the list is half over, Tony’s eyes are closed against it.

 

At last, almost inaudibly, Steve says, “Pepper.”

 

It rips a sound out of Tony’s tight throat, half grief, half anguished guilt.  He hadn’t even wondered about Pepper, hadn’t thought about her at all on that long fall to Earth, hadn’t been tormented by her in dreams.

 

Only the kid’s desperation, Quill’s terrible surprise, Strange’s last calm, sorrowful augury.

 

Only the ignored warning of a whole dead world already gone to ash before he ever set foot on it.

 

Steve has moved up to the bedside, hand on Tony’s shoulder a warm, grounding weight against which he breaks himself in tearless sobs that wrench out of him, constricting his wound, pain radiating outward from it in starbursts.

 

He hopes it’s weeping inside, leaking blood.  He hopes it punches loose a clot that goes to his heart or his brain.

 

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, squeezing.  “I’m so sorry, Tony.”

 

Somehow, he nods in acknowledgement.  Somehow, his dry eyes open.  He feels like his insides have been scoured with sand.  His mouth tastes of copper, and blood pools under his tongue from his bitten cheek.

 

Steve leaves his hand there, a mercy Tony doesn’t deserve, and drags a chair closer with his other hand, sinking into it.  They stay like that, like a medieval tableau— _The Penitent Knight Seeks Counsel_ —long enough that the pressure of Steve’s hand feels like a brand.

 

Tony murmurs up out of his self-pity, “Bucky,” on a breath, and watches Steve’s lashes stutter over his eyes, shielding his expression.

 

Then he puts his hand over Steve’s and squeezes back, lets that hand travel to Steve’s jaw, cupping, ghosts his thumb over the sharp cut of Steve’s cheekbone.

 

Steve turns into the touch, breath hot and damp on Tony’s palm, lips a steady, chaste pressure, there and then gone.

 

Tony feels bereft when Steve rises, steps away.

 

At the door, he says, “Get some sleep, Tony.  I’ll keep watch tonight.  Tomorrow, we start again.”

 

Dusk descends with Steve’s leaving, though Tony can make out the shadow of his protective bulk through the privacy glass of the door.

 

He holds his hand closed over Steve’s kiss, brings it to his mouth, releases it into himself with a sharp, indrawn breath.

 

That breath shudders out of him on a quiet cry, tears at last falling, and he spends himself then on grief, solitary but not alone, knowing the wall of Steve’s back will shore him up against the world’s intrusion until he can don his armor again and go out to fight once more, in the name of all they’ve lost, shoulder to shoulder with the one he didn’t.


End file.
